Installations & Earthworks
Spider Mother - created near Cerrillos, New Mexico - October 2010.

Installation & Earthwork, Video and Music by Jaff Seijas & Leland Wheeler*.
Featuring: Bernadette Martinez.

* we use our stage names: Anchor Mejans & Oberon Skye
THE EIGHT-LEGGED GODDESS:

An earthworks installation and purification ritual

In the museum of folk art in the plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico there is a
display of an embroidery from Yugoslavia of the eight-legged Goddess.
Upon returning to the house where we were staying, Jaff had made a
drawing of the eight-legged Goddess, she had so impressed herself upon
him. The following evening, while walking the property outside Santa Fe,
near the village of Cerrillos, the eight legged Goddess appeared to us as a
beautiful orange and black Tarantula. The next morning as we were
driving into town, the Goddess made a second appearance, again as a
Tarantula, and crossed the road in front of us. A seed was planted in the
heart of Jaff. That evening a discussion ensued about the eight-legged
Goddess. Jaff began creating an art installation in homage to her. As it
went on, we began to understand that we were involved in performing a
purification ritual. The sacrilege committed against the Goddess by todayâs
society is particularly poignant in any fashion magazine. The Divine
Feminine Mystique is about the inner life and not outer appearances. The
Divine Feminine manifests in many guises, not all of them glamorous,
several downright horrifying, but always an embodiment of sacred truth.
The over emphasis on physical beauty has created a multi-billion dollar
industry. What a sense of empowerment might women experience if they
collectively brought a collapse to this industry!

The artists here are not singling out women. This purification ritual is the
first of hopefully many such rituals that will address the larger issue of
consumers realizing that in fact they are addicts. And rather than Spiritual
Liberation most of us are enslaved by the Madison Avenue fiction that
consumption leads to happiness and fulfillment.

The artists were beseeched upon by the Goddess to perform this
purification ritual and during this ritual have become priests in service to
her.

From natural and found objects, an image of the Goddess was created.

Images from fashion magazines were placed by each of the Goddessesâ legs.

Eight words were written on eight white pages. These words were
describing characteristics of the inner world of the Divine Feminine that
are the gifts she brings to the world, no matter how she might look. The
eight words were paired with the eight images.

The images and words were then collected. The words were saved. The
images were torn into pieces and these were conveyed to a hole, previously
dug, at the head of the Goddess.

Divinely led as priests and intercessors for the Goddess, the images were
purified by our Masculine Divine principle by urination.

The purified images were then covered with earth and the entire image
was left as a shrine to the Eight-Legged Goddess.

A reverent respect for the power of the collective Unconscious is a large
part of the philosophy of both artists. This earth work installation has
deepened this in delightful and unexpected ways. Upon our return from
New Mexico, we were doing further research and located a book on
Navaho religion. In this book we were informed that Changing Woman
gave birth to twin heroes whose father was the sun God. Looking further
into this on the internet we discovered that the Spider Goddess of the
Navaho is named Naste Estan, the heroic twins, Nayanazgeni and
Tobadzistsini. While searching for the home of their father, the sun god
Tsohanoia, the Spider Goddess aided them and gave them chant properties.
The twins are often intermediaries between the world of Man and the
Gods. The Twins are sometimes depicted as Monster slayers.

Jaff and I recognized early on our spiritual twinship. The strange and
mysterious workings of the Universe and its involvement of us as
intercessors continues. . .
Leland Wheeler 11/11/10


This movie is part of the collection: Community Video

Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: Spider Mother; Earthworks; Installations; Art; Mythology; Navajo; New Mexico; Santa Fe

Creative Commons license: CC0 1.0 Universal

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